(Musings on Life as a Mom and a Vet)

Careful With the Heat…

Hi folks! In case you haven’t noticed (ie have really good air conditioning and haven’t left your house in the last month or so) it’s really, really hot outside. Oven-hot. 100 degrees at 10 PM hot. Crazy wicked horribly awfully hot.

I can officially complain heartily and with gusto about this God-forsaken heat because I pointedly refrained from complaining about the cold in the winter, just so that I could officially whine about the hot without being overly whiny.

On a serious note though, my good friend’s dog died yesterday of heat stroke. It was a terrible, terrible accident. She has a bunch of kids and the dog slipped into her car to look for snacks during the chaos that ensues when a large family gets home from an outing and nobody noticed. He was locked in the car in the closed garage for 5 hours.

You guys are generally a nice audience so I don’t foresee you getting all “judgy”. This was an accident! A horrible, tragic, accident with a heartbroken family.

You know those times when people accidentally leave their babies in the car and the baby dies of heat stroke. The public goes into a frenzy, they say some horrible things. Meanwhile, I (and I bet more than a few other moms) say a little prayer, thanking God that that wasn’t me. Those poor parents, their anguish. All it would take is one distracted mom, maybe she was out of her routine that day, (I was pretty paranoid about this when the kids were babies, the hubby did the drop-offs in the AM, and I was so afraid on those rare mommy drop-off days that I’d just go to work on auto pilot….) and a sleeping, quiet baby that would result in a life changing disaster.

Ok Ok…my point is this: IT IS HOT!!! Be very, very careful out there with your loved ones. I’m particularly referring to the four-footed ones because they are my medical domain. The heat is taking its toll on the humans, I know (see today’s Dallas Morning News).

Make sure the pets have access to shade, water. Give them lots of breaks on walks, while outside. Really, they probably shouldn’t be out in this heat for long lengths of time at all.

Flat faced breeds have an even harder time with the heat, they can’t pant effectively to disperse heat.

Between the air pollution and the heat we should all just stay inside until October. North Texas just isn’t very habitable at the moment.